Saturday, December 29, 2012

Boston, LA...Huntington's Go-To Teams

It seems like every year since Neal Huntington has been GM that the Bucs, Red Sox and Dodgers have something brewing, whether it's a deal, an exchange of minor leaguers, FA signings or whatever; all three teams have a sharp eye on the others' systems. Ever since the Jason Bay trade that involved the three clubs in 2008, at least a pair of transactions have occurred between the teams every following season:

Boston has got some big boys from Pittsburgh - Jay Bay, Adam LaRoche, and Hanny - as salary dumps. Pittsburgh has got a bunch of unrealized upside in return. Mike McKenry and Eric Bedard are the only Bosox refugees that had any impact, and Bedard was a FA. Brandon Moss had a breakout year; unfortunately, it was in Oakland.

Mark Melancon has a chance to be a key contributor in 2013, while Sands and Stewart both are possibilities to break camp this year. Pimentel is intriguing but running out of time, and Strickland landed on the 40-man roster.

LA Dodgers:

12/26/12 - Pittsburgh traded for OF Jerry Sand & IF Ivan DeJesus (from Boston, but both were basically pass-throughs from the LA system).

LA won the first round, getting Manny Ramirez's hot stick. After that, Pittsburgh has found their catchers, for better or worse, as free agents previously employed by the Dodgers. It was another City of Angels' win when they allowed Barajas to walk; AJ Ellis did a fine job for them at $490 K, while Barajas collected $4M for a pretty forgettable season. It's quite the catcher's merry-go-round with LA: Barajas replaced Russell Martin in LA, who the Bucs just signed, and Ellis replaced Barajas, who Martin has just replaced in Pittsburgh. Got that straight?

But it all evened out with the Dotel-for-McDonald trade. LA got 18 innings from Octavio, while the Pirates have a starter who's had a couple of late-year meltdowns but has also been very good for long stretches.

Talk It Up

If you have any thoughts to share or an idea for a future post, we're all ears. Give us a shout atThe Green Weenie. And by all means, let your voice be heard and leave a comment. We enjoy the chatter.

One rule: if you want to leave a relevant link, or a link to your site, that's fine with us; the more the merrier. But if you're trying to sell stuff or are leaving flaming posts, we zap it, no questions asked.